How to install Git on a GoDaddy shared hosting server

I have a Linux shared hosting account with GoDaddy, which I use to host sites for a selection of my customers. A few months back I decided I needed to get up to speed and use version control to manage these sites. Working on the sites locally and pushing any amended files up to my server using FTP was not a great workflow. So, I decided Git was the way forward.

After hours of research into the possibilities of installing Git on my GoDaddy shared hosting server, I eventually pieced together a way to achieve this set-up. Below is my breakdown of how it’s done.

Note: You will need to have basic knowledge of Git and the command line in order to be able to follow this article.

Install Git on your GoDaddy shared hosting server

1. Open your chosen command line editor (I recommend Terminal for Mac or Putty for Windows) and login to your hosting account:

$ ssh yourusername@yourserver
$ yourpassword

Note: To prevent having to enter your password every time you SSH to your server, set-up SSH key authentication. For anyone unsure how SSH keys work, GoDaddy explain this pretty well:

The public and private key are similar to a puzzle. They are created together to use during the login/authentication process. The public key resides on the server (the remote location) The private key resides locally on your computer/server. When you attempt to login to a server, the public and private key are compared. If they “match”, then you will be allowed to login to the server location.

These binaries have been compiled from Git (version 1.7.3.4) on a Linux machine running CentOS 5.2, which is the same operating system that my GoDaddy server runs. Linux binaries are usually portable so these might also work on other servers running a different operating system. If they don’t work, you can compile them yourself using a virtual machine with the same operating system specifications as your hosting account.

2: Unpack the downloaded Git binaries:

$ tar -xvjf git-1.7.3.4_centos5.2.tar.bz2

Set up the Git repository

So now Git is installed on your server, you can go ahead and create a Git repository. Let’s say we’re going to create this repository in the home directory:

1. Go to the home directory:

$ cd ~/public_html

1. Initialise your Git repository:

$ git init

3. Change the permissions to protect your git repository, as it will be visible on the web:

Clone your Git repository to your machine

Git is now installed on your server and you’ve set-up the repository for your site. You now need to clone this repository to your machine. To keep this tutorial simple, we’re going to clone this repository onto the desktop.

1. Open a new tab in your command line editor, then go to the desktop directory:

$ cd ~/Desktop

2. Clone your live respository:

$ git clone yourusername@yourserver:public_html

3. Add your site files to your local folder, then commit/push them up to the server: